PRC: Volunteers Needed For Delaware County Rain Garden Project

If you enjoy the fun, sun and exercise of gardening, PRC East needs you! Sign up now!

PRC needs to build a group of volunteers in each participating municipality who will work with their neighbors in local rain garden projects. With the health benefits of gardening, it’s a win-win opportunity for you and your community!

In densely developed areas with large areas of impervious surfaces, excess stormwater runoff is a critical pollution problem for our waterways. Rainwater runs off buildings, roads, and driveways into municipal stormwater lines leading to local streams, rivers and other waterways.

This runoff often holds pollutants like oil, fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals adversely affecting the health of the waterway and wildlife.

New federal and state regulations require each municipality to take responsibility for their share of this excess runoff, so simple Green Stormwater Infrastructure projects can help save your community the cost of expensive engineered solutions.

Rain gardens are one of the most simple and effective solutions to fighting runoff and its associated impacts.

The shallow bowl shape captures runoff long enough to filter through soil, breaking down the pollutants and preventing dangerous flooding during wet weather events (ie rainstorms).

Large or small, these gardens can collectively have big impacts.

Every inch of rain falling on 1,000 square feet of impervious surface (such as roof or asphalt) results in 600 gallons of runoff.

The Philadelphia region averages 41 inches of rain per year, so a rain garden intercepting runoff from that area will capture, divert and filter nearly 25,000 gallons annually.

That effect will be multiplied by the dozens of gardens that will be built, keeping millions of gallons of polluted runoff out of our waterways!

Crisci Associates Websites

About Me

This Blog is a companion to www.PaEnvironmentDigest.com, the weekly online newsletter published by Crisci Associates, Harrisburg, PA.
I can be contacted at 717-576-0420 or by sending email to: DHess@CrisciAssociates.com.
I served as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection from 2001 to 2003, Executive Deputy at DEP from 1995 to 2001, as staff to the PA Senate Environmental Committee and various positions in the former Department of Environmental Resources, working on environmental issues for nearly 40 years.